Exclusive: Sprint iPad shows up in Best Buy's database — If you were keeping score during Apple's iPad keynote on Wednesday, you noticed AT&T and Verizon listed amongst the carriers that will get the new iPad, but what about Sprint? It's going to be rockin' LTE in the not-too-distant future, after all.

Why are companies defecting from Google Maps? — First Foursquare and now Apple are scaling back their use of Google Maps. Why are major players starting to back way from Google's nearly ubiquitous mapping service? — In recent years, Google Maps has transformed itself …

Todd Park Named New U.S. Chief Technology Officer — I'm very excited that President Obama today is appointing Todd Park as the new U.S. Chief Technology Officer, with the important task of applying the newest technology and latest advances to make the Federal government work better for the American people.

Twitter Catches the ‘SPDY’ Train — Twitter has embraced Google's vision of a faster web and is now serving webpages over the SPDY protocol to browsers that support it. — SPDY, pronounced “speedy,” is a replacement for the HTTP protocol — the language currently used when your browser talks to a web server.

Leaked: Police Plan to Raid The Pirate Bay — In the spring of 2006 a team of 65 Swedish police personnel entered a datacenter in Stockholm. The officers were tasked with shutting down the largest threat to the entertainment industry at the time - The Pirate Bay's servers.

Is it open? Business hours are now on foursquare! — On the prowl for a late night snack? Or a cafe that's open super early? Or a place that's still serving brunch on a late Sunday afternoon? — Now when you're looking for great places to try, you'll see a business' hours …

New problem for Amazon: Sony defects to OpenStack — Updated: Sony's gaming arm is moving at least some of its workload from Amazon Web Services to the rival Rackspace OpenStack. That move shows that, although AWS remains the leader in public cloud infrastructure, it faces increasing competition …

H.P. Attempts to Take On Amazon's Cloud Service — Within two months, Hewlett-Packard will offer a large and powerful cloud computing service similar to Amazon Web Services, but with more business-oriented features, according the head of the project. — “We're not just building a cloud …

Under the Hood: Building the Location API — Earlier this week, we added the ability to tag location in stories published from apps on the open graph. Like with any update you make from your composer, location can now be added to any photo, link, or update written from an app back to Facebook …

Apple cellphones become top seller in Japan for 1st time — TOKYO (Kyodo) — Cellphones made by Apple Inc. captured the largest share of mobile phones shipments in Japan for the first time in the October-December quarter, accounting for 26.6 percent, due to the popularity of the iPhone 4S smartphone model …

Mozilla begins development of Firefox for Metro — Summary: Mozilla today announced that it has begun “a very large project” to build a Metro styled version of Firefox for Windows 8. Can Firefox for Metro really be ready this summer? — Mozilla's Brian R. Bondy revealed today that development has begun on Firefox for Metro.

SEC, Google Tussled On Phrasing, Timing Of Disclosure — A series of letters between Google (GOOG) and SEC lawyers detail tussles between the two sides over when Google should have warned stockholders about its $500 million settlement for Canadian pharmaceutical ads.